


The Brazilian Toads Sting Songs of Love

by Margot_le_Faye



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Veela, dramione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 13:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12682629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margot_le_Faye/pseuds/Margot_le_Faye
Summary: Prompt: Hermione is bitten by a wild, feral Veela and becomes infected.





	The Brazilian Toads Sting Songs of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "If the Prompt Fits" fest at Hawthorn and Vine. RZZMG gave the prompt.

“Brazilian Stinging Toads are readily available in wizarding Britain,” Ministry official Hermione Granger said to the petitioner. “Why on earth would you want to go to a fairly dangerous magical area of the Amazon rainforest to trap one, yourself?” The petitioner shifted uncomfortably on the plastic office chair that was all the Ministry provided for visitors. Hermione sympathized. Her own chair wasn’t much better. Thank Merlin for Cushioning Charms.

“It’s a matter of research,” the petitioner explained. “I’m trying to recreate an experiment in Alchemy performed by Doña Inez de Gutierrez y Luca in the late sixteenth century. Catching the toad by myself is an important part of the process.”

“Oh, yes?” Hermione said, impressed. “Well, Gutierrez y Luca never did anything by halves. Recreating her work will be quite a challenge.” The petitioner grinned at her.

“Wouldn’t be any fun if it weren’t,” he said, making Hermione chuckle.

“Well, far be it for me to stand in the way of scientific inquiry. Your paperwork is in order, so there’s no reason I can’t approve it and send it on to the next level.” A quick wave of her wand and the requisite approvals stamped themselves on the lines indicated on each page of the twenty-two-page petition. In triplicate. “As this is for your personal research, and has nothing to do with your position as an Unspeakable, you’ll need to see Matthews in office 26A, the next corridor over.” Hermione knew it was nothing to do with his job because if it had been, his approvals would have been handled on the departmental level and she’d have known nothing about them. “Matthews will discuss travel arrangements and set you up with a Portkey. Just make sure you comply with whatever time restrictions he places on you. In that part of the rain forest, certain times of year are more dangerous than others.”

“Yes, well, I had twigged to that bit,” he said cheerfully. “But thanks again, Granger.”

“You’re very welcome, Malfoy,” Hermione said as she handed him the approved paperwork and saw him out the door.

Draco Malfoy, working as an Unspeakable. Who’d have thought it? Malfoy International, still being run by Lucius Malfoy, had come through the Seconding Wizarding War with profits and business interests largely intact. Draco could have led the life of a gentleman of leisure, devoting himself entirely to his hobby of collecting Alchemy manuscripts, with no need to work a day in his life. He had instead opted to apply for, and obtain, a job in one of the hardest-to-get-into departments in the entire Ministry. Further, though nothing specific could be said about what, exactly, he was doing there, rumor had it that, whatever it was, his superiors were highly pleased with it and with him.

Of course, being the cleverest witch of her generation, Hermione had a guess. Given his hobby, she thought he was probably studying the mysteries of the brain and human thought. Alchemists waxed damned philosophical in those parchments, for all they claimed to be studying natural, observable, and measurable phenomena.

No concern of hers, of course. Duty done, Hermione called in the next petitioner and gave Draco Malfoy’s upcoming trip to Brazil no further thought.

Some months later, Hermione was required to go to Brazil, herself.

“Gimpy venom?” she said in mounting horror. “As a recreational hallucinogenic?” Hermione was not speaking of the venom of the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree of Australia, but of the magical cousin of another Australian creature, the Duckbilled Platypus. Unlike their Australian kin, the Gimpies of the Amazon rainforest were smaller, and their venom was particularly nasty. Not lethal, but unpleasant. Why on earth anyone would want to risk a great degree of pain for the sake of getting high was completely beyond her. “What the bloody hell are they thinking!”

“They aren’t,” Edwards told her. “Which is why we are going to stop the influx at its source. We have been reliably informed that the gang responsible for most of what’s available on the black market is planning a massive capture at Gimpy breeding grounds, next week.”

“The height of mating season,” Hermione nodded.

“For several species,” Edwards agreed. “Well, you, I, and Worthington are going to lead a small group of Aurors into the rainforest to spring an ambush. That should put paid to this nonsense.”

“Right,” Hermione said briskly. “When do we leave?”

“The capture is supposed to happen on Wednesday. We’ll be leaving late Tuesday night. Be ready.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Oh, and Granger. Ron Weasley and Harry Potter will be part of the Auror delegation. I trust there will be no difficulty.” Hermione drew herself up.

“I had hoped, sir, that you would realize by now that I am not one to let my personal life interfere with my professional obligations.”

“I never doubted it,” Edwards mollified her by saying. “I merely thought that you might appreciate knowing Mr. Weasley would be part of the operation before you met him on the field. The end of your romantic relationship is well-known, even if your professional demeanor has remained unaffected.”

Hermione outright laughed at this.

“Quite a number of things were unaffected,” she said lightly, “which is why we broke up. Very amicably, I might add. I’m still a regular at the Weasley Sunday brunches, and Ron is still one of my best friends. He even asks me for advice on his love life.”

“So long as he refrains from doing so while we are on the mission,” Edwards chuckled.

In the event, Ron was, indeed, all business on this mission. As was everyone else. Which was not to say that the sheer tedium of the assignment didn’t get to them.

“Bloody unpleasant, if you ask me,” Ron opined at one point, holding the sleeve of his robe against his nose to block out a particularly pungent musk rising from the breeding grounds.

“That’s why the rest of us are using filtering charms,” Hermione whispered back, muttering a short spell and waving her wand in her ex-boyfriend’s direction. “There. Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Ron agreed, lowering his arm. They relapsed into silence, hidden by the lush jungle vegetation, waiting quietly for the poachers to appear. 

In due time, they did so. Wands flared, spells were cast, battle was engaged. The Aurors outnumbered the poachers, but the latter were not going down without a fight. Or, most of them weren’t. One particularly agile youth managed to make a run for it. Hermione took off after him. He didn’t get far before she’d successfully got him with a _Stupefy_.

“All right there, Hermione?” Harry called out. He’d apparently followed her to make sure she was okay, but this one unconscious poacher wasn’t going to give her any trouble. Meanwhile, she could hear sounds of altercation indicating that the battle between the poachers and the Aurors was still ongoing.

“Yes. Got him. Go back to the others. I’ll bring this bloke along and be with you in a moment.” Harry left her to it and returned to the banks of the Amazon where the ambush had been set. Hermione, as per department regulations, checked her prisoner’s breathing and vital signs before casting _Incarcerous_ on him. Her next action would have been to use _Mobilicorpus_ to bring him along to the clearing, but before she could, the sound of something crashing through the underbrush caught her attention. 

While she had worked, a perfume she had taken to be simply the combined scents of Amazonian flowers had gotten through her scent-filtering spell. Because the perfume was quite delectable, she hadn’t paid it any particular mind. Now, though, it seemed oddly to be getting closer as the crashing, scrabbling sounds grew nearer. Hermione turned toward the sounds, wand at the ready.

Then the unseen creature causing all the noise broke through.

Her first impulse was to laugh. It looked like a scrawny albino ostrich, albeit one that smelled absolutely lovely. Its wings were bedraggled, its feet and body seemed too outsized for its stick-like legs, and it appeared to be a cross-eyed member of whatever species it represented. She didn’t know of any breed of ostrich that was native to the Amazon, but she did know that the African variety were, despite their comical appearance, quite dangerous when angered.

This one appeared more dazed that angry, and while she would have been delighted to discover a new species, she had no time to pursue that avenue of scientific inquiry right now. Maybe Edwards would let her come back with a small expedition in a day or two. For now, she had a poacher to transport.

“Shoo,” she told the ostrich.

It did not shoo. Instead, it blinked once, uttered a weird screech, then ran right toward her. Startled, Hermione cast a Shield Charm that did nothing to shield her from the unexpected avian attack.

She got off one scream for help before the blasted beast bit her, then took off back into the jungle.

“Well, really,” Hermione said crossly as the ostrich retreated. It was the last thing she said before she fainted, moments before Harry and Ron came looking for her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“This,” Hermione Granger said to her reflection in the mirror, “is not possible.”

The mirror begged to differ. So did the Healer watching her.

“Quite evidently, it is possible,” she told the patient. “Rare, perhaps––”

Hermione watched her reflection’s large, golden-brown eyes scintillate before narrowing into angry slits. The fact that they were large and golden and scintillating instead of plain and brown and _human_ was at the root of the anger causing them to turn into narrow slits. Well, that, and her ridiculously long and silky locks which had gone a few shades closer to red than brown. And her ridiculously plumped lips. And her bodacious boobs, her tinier waist, her more ample hips and derrière. Baby got back, all right. Along with front and sides. All of which was upsetting enough. The Healer’s remarks weren’t helping.

“ _Perhaps?!_ she screeched. Yes, definitely, that had been a bird-like screech, not a human shriek. Bugger. Now her fingers were tingling. Another minute, and she’d be airborne, with a fully formed beak and ten sharp talons, ready to hurl fireballs. With an effort, she drew a deep breath, closed her annoying eyes, and counted to ten, backwards. The tingling in her fingers disappeared. Hermione turned to face the Healer before opening her eyes. “Only wild, feral Veela use their bite for defense as well as for mating. A mating bite does not change the recipient into a Veela. A defensive bite, on the other hand, does. Clearly, I received a defensive bite. From a creature that looked nothing like the illustrations of feral Veela in my textbooks, and that, lest we forget _was last seen in the eighteenth century, at the other end of the world from where I was._ ” Another deep breath was required at that point. “I believe the last recorded case of a human woman turning into a Veela was in 1648. So, I think there’s no _perhaps_ about how rare this is. What I want to is why this happened.”

The Healer shrugged. “Evidently, you frightened it. If it had been angry, it would have hurled fire at you.”

“How could I have frightened it?” Hermione wailed. “I was minding my own business, tying up a poacher, when it crashed into where I was!”

“So, you did nothing to alarm it?” the Healer asked. Hermione mumbled a reply. “Sorry?” the Healer prodded, not having heard the reply the first time.

“I said, I may have told it to shoo.”

“Ah, well, that would have done it,” the Healer nodded sagely. “Well, Miss Granger, if you ask me, you got off lightly. There are far worse things you might have met up with in the Amazon rainforest than a feral Veela. In fact, I could give you a list of women who would have been delighted by such an encounter, and I’m not sure I’m not one, myself.” The look she cast over Hermione was somewhat wistful, but she was nothing if not professional, and quickly brought herself back to the matter at hand.

“You’re released from hospital,” she said, “and as you’re perfectly healthy, there’s no need to stay on bedrest or follow any sort of special diet.”

“So I can go back to work?” Hermione asked eagerly. The Healer hesitated.

“There’s no health reason why you can’t, but if you want my advice, you’ll transfigure your cloak into one with a calash hood, and wear a veil beneath it. Especially if your job involves working with the public.”

Hermione gloomily acknowledged the wisdom in this, and transfigured her cloak, accordingly. A handkerchief she kept in her purse was easily changed into the requisite veil. Thus shrouded, Hermione took the Floo from the lobby in St. Mungo’s to the lobby of the ministry.

Her disguise wasn’t quite as effective as either she or the Healer had hoped it would be. The wizard on security duty to whom she presented her wand seemed disposed to keep her in idle conversation while an impatient line of visitors grew behind her. She had to resort to threatening action from her department head if she were kept from an entirely fictitious meeting before he stopped trying to impress her with a description of his gym routine and the unfortunately not metaphorical flexing of his muscles and allowed her to go through.

Before she’d made it to the relative safety of the elevators, no less than five male colleagues stopped her to inquire if she were fully recovered from her heroic mission in the rainforest, and to invite her to lunch. Or dinner. Or to meet their mothers. She managed to elude them and get to the elevator, but that wasn’t much better. It wasn’t empty, and while the women took the opportunity to get off the elevator at the next floor, all of the men declared they had business on Hermione’s floor. In desperation, she called their bluff. After they insisted they had to go to her floor, she got back on the elevator, claiming she’d forgotten an errand five levels up. A spell caused the doors to slam shut and take her upward before any of them could remember forgotten errands of their own. Hermione took advantage of the empty elevator to _Disillusion_ herself, and took the further precaution of getting off one floor above her own, and sneaking down to her office by the stairs.

Sadly, that wasn’t enough. It seemed no sooner had she snuck through the stairway exit onto her floor and begun to tiptoe toward her office that every male in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was drawn to her corridor.

“Miss Granger, I wondered if I might have a word with you about an idea I had for closer cooperation between your approvals and my travel coordination. Perhaps over cocktails,” Matthews, of Office 26A, suggested.

“Had lunch yet, Miss Granger?” Worthington asked. “There’s a new restaurant in Diagon Alley that’s supposed to be brilliant.”

“Excellent work on the Brazilian mission, Hermione.” That was Edwards, her immediate supervisor, himself. “You don’t mind if I call you Hermione, do you? As I said, excellent work. We really must discuss upcoming career opportunities. I know just the place where we can have lovely dinner and a nice, private chat.”

Hermione babbled she knew not what excuses and managed to get into her office, only to find that her ordeal was not yet over.

Harry and Ron had been advised of her release from hospital and her intention of coming to work. They had managed to get permission to wait for her _in_ her office.

“What on earth are you doing in here?” she asked, upon finding them seated before her desk.

“Worried about you, obviously,” Harry said. “What’s with the disguise?”

Thankful for what seemed to be a normal reaction from Harry, and from Ron, who said nothing but simply sat there, Hermione felt safe enough to unveil, and hang up her calash on the hook behind her door.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said flinging the veil atop the cloak and turning to face her friends. “Apparently, the thing that bit me in the jungle was a wild, feral Veela and now I’m well on my way to becoming a Veela, myself.”

“Very well on your way, I’d say,” Harry nodded approvingly as his eyes roamed over her figure appreciatively. “But perhaps you shouldn’t have rushed the return to work. Why don’t you let me take you back to your flat, and make you a nice cup of tea?”

“Oi, mate,” Ron finally spoke up. “If anyone’s going to take my girlfriend back to her flat and make her tea, it’s going to be me!”

“She’s not your girlfriend. You broke up,” Harry pointed out.

“Yeah, well, maybe we shouldn’t have. And what’s it to you, anyway? Aren’t you my sister’s boyfriend?”

“Ginny,” Harry said loftily, “is still a schoolgirl.”

“Bugger,” Hermione said crossly, cast _Stupefy_ on the pair of them, and _Mobilicorpused_ their arses out her door and into the corridor. After which she cast _Colloportus_ on her office door, followed it up with a Silencing Charm, and followed _that_ up with a time-delayed _Confundus_ that ought to convince anyone trying to see her that they were on the wrong floor, if not in the wrong building entirely. She topped it all off by warding her office to be impervious to magical interference from others, so that only she could take down her spells.

She then sat down at her desk and had a good cry.

Eventually, she pulled herself together and got to work on the mountain of forms awaiting her approval. The mountain had been present from the first day of her employment. No matter how diligently she attacked it, she had never reduced it to mere molehill proportions. As it had been gathering height on her desk since that thrice-damned mission in Brazil the week before, it was now closer to Everest range.

Well, if she had to give up working in the office and stop seeing petitioners, or attending department meetings, perhaps she might succeed in clearing up the lot.

After which, whoever replaced her doing the actual coming-face-to-face-with-people portion of her job would likely take over the whole thing. She didn’t hold out much hope for securing a work-from-home position. The Ministry wasn’t keen on those, and she doubted extended sick leave would be approved. Being turned into a Veela wasn’t exactly something from which one recovered. Most likely, she’d be pensioned off as permanently disabled from a work-related injury. The thought brought on another bout of tears.

It was while she was engaged in this latest round of crying that she heard the tentative knock on her door. She should not have heard it. That was the point of the Silencing Charm. Had someone got through her wards?

“Who is it?” Hermione called out, getting her wand in hand, just in case.

“It is I, Draco Malfoy.”

Hermione almost rolled her eyes at the punctilious respect for grammar shown by his response, then thought better of it. He sounded relatively normal, and she supposed she’d have to let someone in, sometime. Not to mention she’d have to leave the office at some point, even if just to Floo home.

Keeping her grip on her wand, Hermione ended the spells, charms, and wards she’d placed on her office, and called permission for him to come in.

Draco opened the door a crack, and stuck his head in. With the opening of the door, a pleasant scent permeated her office. It seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place it. As she frowned trying to chase down the memory, Draco spoke up.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Far from it,” Hermione said bitterly, giving up trying to identify the elusive scent, “but come in anyway.” She still had not let go of her wand. Seeing it, Draco sighed, but pushed the door open and stepped inside. As soon as he took the uncomfortable seat in front of her desk—though he had the sense to cast a Cushioning Charm first, this time—she replaced the spells she had taken down.

“Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Malfoy,” she said in her most businesslike tones, “and do be warned: if you dare invite me to dinner, I shall throw you out on your arse.”

“Oh, er, no, that is to say, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. We all saw what happened to Potter and Weasley. They’re very sorry, you know. The spell of Veela attraction was broken as soon as you tossed them out and slammed the door. Potter was so horrified by what he’d done, he went straight to a jeweler in Diagon Alley to buy something to give Ginevra Weasley when he goes to grovel at her feet for forgiveness. What, exactly had he done with you, by the way?”

“Offered to take make me a cup of tea,” Hermione said wryly.

“Well, that doesn’t exactly sound too, er, well not like something that required an apology, at least.”

“The cup of tea was to be made for me after he took me back to my apartment, and when Ron brought up Ginny, Harry said she was only a schoolgirl.”

“Ah, yes. That does sound like a diamond bracelet’s worth of groveling at least. Or perhaps a nice emerald pendant.”

“But it isn’t Harry’s fault,” Hermione sniffled. “And it isn’t Matthews’ or Worthington’s or Edwards’. It’s this stupid bite from that stupid feral bird that’s turned me into a stupid Veela and ruined _everything!_ ” The last was said on a wail just before she burst into tears again. Draco immediately conjured a stack of handkerchiefs and offered her one. Then he called for a Malfoy house-elf, who apparently had Ministry clearance, and got Hermione a nice cup of tea, after all. 

“Surely not everything is ruined?” he said tentatively as he handed her the cup.

“Yes, it is,” Hermione sniffled, accepting the cup. “I’m going to have to give up my job at the Ministry and live on a stupid pension and I’ll never be able to run for Minister of Magic and I’ll never get to save the wizarding world.” She burst into renewed tears and put the cup down on her desk, untasted. “My life,” she said between sobs, “is over.”

Draco handed her another handkerchief.

“About that,” he said diffidently. “It needn’t be, you know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sobbed. “Of course my life is over! How can I possibly do my job, or _any_ job, when every single male I come across is immediately turned into a brainless peacock preening for my attention! Even my best friend and my elderly boss and all of my coworkers and— ” She stopped short as one glaring exception occurred to her.

“But not you,” she said slowly, as her eyes began to scintillate. “You were supposed to be in Brazil, yourself Malfoy. During mating season for your Brazilian Stinging Toad? The same mating season as the Gimpies?”

“Yes, well about that—”

“And there’s always been talk about Veela ancestry in the Malfoy line.” Her fingers began to tingle.

“All the old pureblood families have that,” Draco said defensively.

“You wouldn’t know anything about the scrawny albino ostrich that attacked me, would you, Malfoy?” she purred as her hair began to crackle and she rose an inch or two into the air.

“Scrawny?” Malfoy gasped in outraged indignation. “ _Scrawny?_

Abruptly, Draco Malfoy’s eyes glowed silver and a pair of resplendent white wings sprang fully formed from his back. Shredding his robes in the process. “Scrawny??” he roared, leaping from his chair, the ruined robes dropping away to reveal the magnificent form of a Veela male in full rage.

A sight which soothed the Harpy version of Hermione right into full seductress mode.

“Perhaps scrawny was the wrong word,” she purred, rising from her own chair and gliding with a hip-swaying walk over to the male in display before her. She lifted her hand and stroked her hand along the velvety feathers. “Gorgeous might be better.”

This was too much for Draco, who wrapped her in his wings and, being in full Veela mating frenzy, managed to break through the Ministry wards to Disapparate and carry her off to his apartments at Malfoy Manor.

It should be noted that the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, having had many dealings with Veela and their mates over the course of centuries, was especially warded to permit Veela to slip though the wards on such occasions. Which was, not coincidentally, how he got through the wards Hermione had placed on her office.

Sometime later, Hermione resting her head on her lover’s shoulder and playing with a strand of his ice-blond hair, spoke.

“I think,” she said, “you owe me an explanation.”

“It was the Brazilian Stinging Toad,” Draco confessed. “If I’d come into my inheritance earlier, I’d never have gone near the damned thing. I was curious about the family legacy, because it’s on both my father’s and my mother’s sides. But I didn’t realize I was full-Veela myself until I was in the jungle, and the most delectable scent of cinnamon came to me. That is what you smell like to me, in case you were wondering. Anyway, just as I realized what it was and what it meant, the little bastard I’d captured stung me.”

“And that turned you feral,” she nodded.

“That made a right mess of me,” he said. “Which is why you ended up with a defensive bite instead of the claiming one. Not sure I’ll ever live down being called scrawny.”

“Trust me,” Hermione purred, “you’ve redeemed yourself.”

There was another interlude before conversation resumed.

“We’ve still got half an hour before the Ministry closes,” Draco said. “We could pop over, formalize our mating bond with a marriage, and that should stop the unattached blokes sniffing after my mate. That’s what channels the allure of a female Veela, you know, and directs it from the world at large to one specific male. The mating bond. We can always do a formal ceremony and lavish reception later.”

“You mean I’ll be able to go back to my job? Run for Minister some day?”

“Why not?”

“Lovely,” Hermione said, rising from the bed and dragging him up with her so they could hurriedly dress and go off to the Ministry. After their vows were exchanged, she sent a note up to Edwards explaining she was taking two weeks leave for her honeymoon, while Draco sent a similar message to his boss. An hour later, bags packed, Crookshanks in his carrier and her apartment locked up, before they took off for a Malfoy villa on the Amafi coast, Hermione had one question for Draco.

“I know Unspeakables can’t talk about their work, but they can answer general questions. So I just want to know if I’m right. I believed you were studying thought, and the workings of the mind, but now I realize your curiosity about your Veela heritage means you were probably studying the nature of love. You wanted to know if the Veela mating bond is just a biological imperative, or if it is true love. Am I right?”

“Clever girl,” Draco told her fondly. “Yes, you are right. Never doubt, my Hermione, that what we feel for each other is really and truly love.”

And for all the long decades of their deliriously happy marriage, she never did.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic came about because I misremembered two things. The title of a 1989 book, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" and the Gipsy Kings 1996 album, "Love Songs." Somehow, in my mind, the two were remembered as one thing, a movie titled "The Gypsy Kings Sing Songs of Love." My brain is strange that way.
> 
> Speaking of my strange brain, I came up with Brazilian Stinging Toads for my Hermione Big Bang fic, "Hermione Haunted" The little buggers have been turning up in my fics ever since. I have no idea why. I think they even make an appearance in "Tender Vengeance." Hope you enjoyed their appearance here.


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